Amelia Rozear Original Character: Marx

Artist Statement “I am a junior in high school, and my current goal over the next few months is to develop a portfolio ready for college admission. I have always been interested in digital art, and I have been practicing it seriously over the past year.

This was one of the first digital pieces in which I really focused on lighting to convey a destructive mood, as well as my character’s personality. Along with experimenting light and color in this piece, I tried to incorporate the different brushes available to me in Photoshop.”

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Video Transcript“You’re doing some nice things in this piece. As you say in your statement, using various brushes to make the varying textures in the fire is working really cool. Also, I love how your choice to use some green cool colors in the hair, so often when people design like fire based characters they only use warm colors and you need to use the greens to kind of make things pop in comparison.

With the character itself, though, she needs to be pushed further. She seems very straightforward and just a typical fire character, and I would challenge you think outside the box a bit.

How can you use her physical features, her face, her clothing, her hair, to kind of explain more of her personality? What is she like? And use visuals to explain this character more. And I think if you flush that out, then you can really get some good success with these pieces.”

4 responses on "Amelia Rozear"

When I read mangas or graphic novels, I spend so much time enjoying the chapter heading pages. The artists use those pages as a flashy way to showcase character personalities. One of my favorites is Naruto. The expressions and action poses and details are all so beautifully articulated and contribute to the storyline. I think you’d get a lot out of looking at some of those chapter headings for your own work.

I think your mark making is very dramatic and effective. I think you can further use that to your advantage in the way that you draw the character herself. Then she will look further unified with the fire around her.

I love that you’re experimenting with different brushes! They work especially well in the fire, because they add to the movement and textures that make this area so dynamic!

With a piece that really emphasizes the lighting source like this, I think more attention can be put towards how the fire affects its surroundings. I think more contrast in the face and dress, for example, would make the setting a lot more uniform. Really delve into how the fire would light this figure!

This is a really exciting piece where you’re experimenting with a lot! Keep pushing yourself to explore these areas, you’re clearly off to a fabulous start!

The lighting effects in the fire and the texture in the hair are so dramatic! I wish that light source had a stronger effect on the figure, though – there are some great highlights on the character’s nose and lips, but otherwise her face doesn’t have much contrast.

Likewise, your choice to shroud the character’s body in darkness was very bold, and could lead to an interesting exploration of positive and negative space in future pieces, but here it seems to be working cross-purpose with your desire to experiment with lighting… A few more naturalistic highlights on the fabric would integrate the figure with her environment more successfully, and allow us to see more of your character design.

I applaud your eagerness to experiment, however – it’s clear that you’re testing out all of the tools at your disposal, and that’s yielding some really interesting results that will push you to make even more dynamic work in the future!

I think the fire in this painting is amazing! The really exaggerated light and dark contrast in the fire is especially compelling, and the sense of luminosity that creates is really striking. I also think the variety of brushes and marks in the fire is much wider and seems more experimental and lively.

By comparison, I think the facial expression and gesture of the figure don’t express nearly as much as the fire. The fire is actually a lot more emotional than the face! One thing you could consider is doing something with the gesture of the figure to demonstrate what her personality is, right now her stance is rather stiff and she seems to be more posing than anything else.

If you can find a way for the face and gesture of the figure to be as provocative as the hair and the fire, then your character is really going to have a presence!